Made nearly ten
years ago, “Afterlife” is only now finding its way to home entertainment, and
the reason is clear to find in the cast members. This British horror series
stars Andrew Lincoln of “The Walking Dead” fame, with ghosts rather than
zombies for the actor to take on. Unfortunately, the series feels more than ten
years old, with a dated and cliché narrative structure. Ghost stories are
difficult to make engaging, and “Afterlife” does little to update or modernize
the tired clichés of the genre. In many ways this series is The Sixth Sense in
episodic form, with a gifted medium burdened with the task of helping all of
the dead ghosts she encounters. Season two even begins with a narrative in
which the dead are unaware they are no longer alive, a further reminder of the
1999 box office phenomenon.

It is completely
unfair to make even the slightest comparison of “In the Flesh” to “The Walking
Dead,” although it is inevitable that this association will be made between the
two zombie television events. For one thing, “In the Flesh” is not a
post-apocalyptic storyline. We join the story after civilization has recovered
almost entirely, and it instead becomes a story about integration and
acceptance. The horror elements are all but removed and zombies instead become
a symbol for diversity and a metaphor for homosexuality.

There may be a
brilliant storyline somewhere buried in “The Honorable Woman.” It’s just a
shame that the writers didn’t feel the need to accommodate the audience in
understanding what is going on until it is nearly finished. While this may work
for a film which audiences are invested in once they buy the ticket and sit in
the darkened theater, but an 8-episode television series provides too many
opportunities to jump ship before revelations make the narrative comprehensible,
much less enjoyable.

Imagine the
American television series, “Bones.” Now remove all humor, quirky characters,
convenient plot twists and escapist entertainment. What you would have
remaining is the long-running British pathology crime series, “Silent Witness.”
Whether you would be happier with this than the mindless American show depends
on how much accuracy you want from your programming, as opposed to
entertainment. “Silent Witness” also has the benefit of TV-movie lengths for
each of the mystery narratives, which allows for more detail and character
development.

If sexual
innuendo and jokes at the intelligence level of a fifteen-year-old boy are
still humorous to you, or if you still are fifteen, “2 Broke Girls” will make
you laugh. I watch the series with mild amusement, mostly because I have met
girls like the foul-mouthed and sex-obsessed Max (Kat Denning), as well as the
superficial and self-involved Caroline (Beth Behrs). I watch the show because I
can turn it off after twenty minutes, reminded why I no longer date those
girls. After three seasons, both have grown slightly. Max has her first real
relationship and takes steps in achieving her dreams. Caroline is also humbled
with time from wealth, though her disgustingly greedy side still emerges with
any hint of wealth in men, even despising Max’s boyfriend when she thinks he is
poor despite having no money herself.

There are a
dozen different ways that “The Mentalist” can be compared to other shows. You
could easily compare it to the cable show “Psych,” but I tend to find
similarities with this show and “Lie to Me.” Both use the study of human
behavior in order to deduce the truth behind a crime. “Lie to Me” was about a
man brilliantly able to detect lies, better than a polygraph. There is a
sequence in “The Mentalist” in which a suspect says that he heard Patrick Jane
(Simon Baker) could tell when anyone was lying. He is part Sherlock Holmes, but
mostly just a con artist with extensive experience in the ways of human
behavior.

“Adventure Time”
is in that new category of animation on the cartoon network which I find
confounding, albeit remarkably entertaining. It seems as though this is a
straightforward kid’s show, but it gets remarkably close to being edgy enough
for adults at moments. There is always a ripcord to pull, quickly pulling the
narrative back to safety in time for the episode’s close, but watching this
show with children present often makes me nervous. Perhaps this is partly due
to the high octane, bizarre, and often psychedelic nature of the show which
makes me feel as though I’m on drugs.

This Cartoon
Network series from 1999 feels like a marriage of the classic Hanna-Barbera
Productions style of animation with the irreverent and slightly dark narratives
which have recently become popular in series such as “Adventure Time” and
“Regular Show.” I would hardly call it a classic, but it seems to have enough
of an oddly dedicated fanbase to account for the DVD release of the second
season. I would assume a large percentage of those likely to buy this set are
also adults, because some of the content in “Courage the Cowardly Dog” borders
on being too frightening and bizarre for younger children.

So many stations
have tried to do the historical soap opera narratives recently, apparently in
an attempt to cash in on the few that have worked. It should come as no
surprise that CW has decided to follow in the footsteps of series such as “The
Tudors” and “The White Queen,” and even less of a surprise that they have
treated it the same as they did “Gossip Girl” or “Vampire Diaries.” With a cast
of young attractive actors, the story quickly set up a love triangle, a
narrative necessity of any CW series. While this is an inevitability that is
irritating but forgivable, it is far more difficult to justify the typical CW
inclusion of current pop music in the soundtrack.

There have been
many similar films about fathers learning to spend more time with their sons,
and possibly even more food-centric narratives such as the one in Chef. In some ways, this film feels like
the plot of Real Steel, only with
food replacing the fighting robots, directed by the same man whose directorial
debut also had a touching scene of cooking for a sweet young girl in need of a
parental figure. It is nice to see Jon Favreau return to his roots as a
filmmaker, though it may have been more believable had he not cast Scarlett
Johansson as his onscreen lover.

With the
constant reliance on remakes and sequels in the film industry, it shouldn’t
come as much of a surprise to see these habits spill over into television. This
past year saw a large number of film-to-television adaptations in every
imaginable genre, from romantic comedy (“About a Boy”) to dark crime films (“Fargo”) and serial killer narratives (“Hannibal”). When Robert Rodriguez decided to
create his own station, it almost seemed inevitable he would dig into his past
material for the original material. I am just shocked that it wasn’t from one
of the longer-running franchises, such as El
Mariachi or Machete.

“The Wonder
Years” was one of those shows I thought would never make it to DVD, mostly
because of how much great music from the show had copyright issues. Not only
has it finally made its way onto DVD for the first time ever, it comes with the
originally broadcast music, including Joe Cocker’s memorable rendition of The
Beatles’ With a Little Help from My
Friends. But this is a show that is much more than the fantastic
soundtrack, though just as much of a classic as the hits that took so long to
get copyrighting for.

American Muscle is a revenge film that
is all style and absolutely no substance, from the acting to the asinine excuse
of a screenplay. Logic and decency is thrown out, along with everything other
than rusted metal, splattered blood, and bare breasts. It is basically an overly
bad Grindhouse attempt at Faster, the
Dwayne Johnson film nobody saw. Despite a surprisingly slick visual palette,
director and cinematographer Ravi Dhar seems to have no clue what real humans
behave like and no interest in relating to his audience.